Ponderous Elektra a Super Disappointment

When we last met Elektra Natchios (Jennifer Garner, 13 Going on 30) she was dealt a fatal blow by the nefarious Bullseye towards the end of 2002’s Daredevil. Hovering between the plains of life and death, she has been resurrected by blind martial arts master Stick (Terence Stamp, a long way from General Zod and Superman and looking embarrassed) and taught many of the fine arts of Kimagure. But before she can complete her training, Stick sends Elektra away because she has not yet decided which side of the fence; light or dark, good or evil; she is on.

Distraught by her dismissal (and still not quite over the death of her parents and that pesky recent near-death experience), Elektra becomes an assassin-for-hire; dealing death to those criminals the law can’t find let alone prosecute. But when her latest assignment means dispatching single father Mark Miller (Goran Visnjic, The Deep End) and his 13-year-old daughter Abby (Kirsten Prout, Mindstorm), Elektra starts to have second thoughts about her chosen profession. But when The Hand (a nefarious group of super-strong ninjas bent on world domination) attack the duo, the assassin does the unthinkable and morphs from killer to protector and starts going down the road to becoming a superhero.

One thing the world did not need was a sequel to Daredevil. Luckily, that’s not what we got. Unfortunately, what arrived in its place isn’t much better. Elektra is a ponderous, overly melodramatic mess rambling incoherently from scene to scene and doing its best to leave the audience in a head-scratching ball of confusion. Pity, really, for during the first twenty or so minutes I admit to being more or less relatively entertained. There’s a nice opening featuring a properly frightened crime lord (Jason Isaacs, Peter Pan, in a nifty cameo) and Garner fills the shoes of her conflicted heroine much better here than she ever did the first time around. I also enjoyed her arrival on Vancouver Island getting to know Mark and Abby, the three of them developing a rather pleasant chemistry that’s a lot of fun.

But once the heroics start things go downhill quick, so much so it’s like watching a train wreck happening in slow motion and being powerless to stop it. Stick and his band of heroes The Chaste pop up and disappear for almost no reason, while The Hand’s henchmen die so quickly and conveniently that any tension generated by their appearances evaporates before it even has a chance to generate a single bead of sweat. Don’t get me wrong, they’re impressive looking alright (especially a humongous giant of one ominously nicknamed Stone), but that doesn’t make them scary when it takes a half-a-second or so to bump them off. (A nifty girl-on-girl kiss between Elektra and supervillian whose very touch can cause things to die is a bit of a stunner, however, and sure to illicit more than a few wolf whistles from the male side of the house.)

That’s not the real problem, though. The real problem is the script’s increasingly tedious melodrama and director Rob Bowman (Rein of Fire) muddled direction. Sure, the movie looks and sounds great (especially Buffy the Vampire Slayer veteran Christophe Beck’s outstanding score), but it isn’t remotely enough. For a comic book film, Elektra simply isn’t any fun, weighty and tedious in all the wrong ways. Even for a January release (which historically have always tended to be dogs), this is still a major disappointment, especially considering that Bowman did such a great job with The X-Files (one of the best TV-to-movie adaptation in recent memory) and one of the script’s co-writers is Zak Penn (Incident at Loch Ness) who worked on X2.

On the plus side, it isn’t Daredevil, which as bad as that one was it’s about the best compliment I can muster. And for those that claim to be fans, Elektra finally dons the fabled red suit (and as deliciously sexy as it is I wish I had the figure to wear it) and Garner struts her stuff within it admirably. It’s not remotely enough, however, and this superhero spectacular ends up being just another in a long line of big budget missed opportunities. In the end, I predict a feeble box office will do the one thing a gut-shot from Bullseye never could, and that’s send Elektra to a justly deserved grave.

Film Rating: êê  (out of 4)